Wednesday, May 28, 2008

'Seven Wonders of America'

New York City, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and South Dakota's Badlands were named to a list of seven U.S. wonders featured on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Also on the list were the Grand Canyon, Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Preserve, Washington D.C.'s National Mall, and the Saturn V moon rocket at the Davidson Center for Space Exploration in Huntsville, Ala. Huntsville is nicknamed Rocket City because the U.S. space exploration program began there in the late 1940s.

The show assembled a panel of experts to choose the seven destinations, which included manmade as well as natural wonders. The places were announced one at a time over seven shows, with the final one airing May 14.

The experts who chose the wonders were Annie Griffith Belt, a photographer for the National Geographic Society; Brent D. Glass, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History; Michael Roberts, executive editor of Outside Magazine; Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History; Patricia Schultz, author of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die," and the travel guidebook writer and editor Pauline Frommer.

Viewers chose Yellowstone National Park as an eighth wonder in an online vote.